South to Santa Barbara

Since we came back from Hawaii my eyes have had a hard time being happy with about 2/3 less light outside in the SF Bay Area plus, in Hawaii if you usually get rain a little every day wherever you are it also means most of the time there is some sun which might not be true in the Greater SF Bay area if you are within 10 miles of the coast because of high and low clouds and fog (which were basically never ending from June 2022 until we went to Hawaii on Kaui and Maui.

So, we returned to sun which was wonderful and then thunder and lightning and rain and the rain hit almost everywhere in California to a greater or lesser degree.

So, yesterday we set out south for Santa Barbara down Highway 101 which is the biggest 4 lane highway that goes from San Francisco all the way to Santa Barbara which at this time of night at around 11pm says it takes (right now only) (5 hours and 7 minutes time) if you drove from San Francisco to Santa Barbara right now down Highway 101. However, during the day it is going to be a lot more than that depending upon the time of day and what the traffic is doing. 

For example, if you left at 7 am tomorrow this same trip likely would be somewhere between 7 and 8 hours time because of Rush Hour traffic from San Francisco down 101 to around Gilroy or Morgan Hill.

But, if you left at 9 am you might make it within 6 hours from San Francisco if you were really really lucky traffic wise. And Conversely Salinas might get busy and San Luis Obispo might get busy or Santa Maria also might get busy and Paso Robles to Atascadero might also get busy at rush hours morning or night or Friday Night or Sunday night too.

Anyway, we headed south and I drove to about the In n Out burger in Atascadero which is where my wife like's to stop to take a break sometimes and then I let her drive the rest of the way. She often likes to leave around 2 pm or after but that really doesn't work for me now in life. But, I could still make it to Atascadero and be okay. For me, an ideal time to drive during the day would be from about 9 or 10 am to around 5 or 6 pm if I wanted to drive a 4 to 8 hour driving shift wherever we were going at the time.

The sun got brighter as we drove south which was nice too. So, by the time we got to Santa Barbara the temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees warmer in general than on the northern Coast where we usually live. And wonderfully the temperature in Santa Barbara went up to around 71 to 73 degrees even though the weather people said originally only about 65 to 67 so that was really nice too. It's been colder than normal lately throughout California in fact I heard that some places between Pinnacles and Big Sur were down to around 20 degrees a few days ago. But most places along 101 didn't get below about 32 degrees this week even in the nights.

So, generally speaking this was a really nice trip south and my older daughter is back from Europe so we got to spend most of the day with her so that was wonderful today too for my wife and I.

So, so far this is a really great trip south to Santa Barbara. Also, ALL of the channel Islands were visible today from the high Cliffs which was really great too today.